In a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material, particularly a color light-sensitive material for photographing, there is required a light-sensitive material having good color reproducibility and sharpness and exhibiting no adverse affect on the photographic processing activity of a processing solution in continuously processing the light-sensitive material.
The novel DIR coupler in which a dye formed from the coupler is eluted in a developing solution after a color development was proposed in JP-A-58-162949 ( the term "JP-A" as used herein means an unexamined published Japanese patent application) and JP-A-63-37350 for the purpose of improving a sharpness, a color reproducibility, and a light-sensitive material storing performance. The sharpness, color reproducibility and light-sensitive material storing performance were certainly improved by using these DIR couplers. However, there was involved the problem that the application only of these couplers markedly increased the fluctuation in the activity of a developing solution.
Further, there are proposed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,782,012, and JP-A-57-151944, JP-A-3-198048, and JP-A-3-228048, light-sensitive materials which contain DIR couplers having structures similar to those of the couplers of the present invention represented by Formula (I) and Formula (II) and have improved color reproducibility, sharpness and storing performance of the light-sensitivity, and which are designed so that a development inhibitor eluted in a processing solution is deactivated therein to thereby allow the adverse affects to be less liable to be exerted to the processing activity in a continuous processing. Certainly, an interlayer effect and an edge effect were improved by using these DIR couplers and the color reproducibility and sharpness were improved to some extent. However, the effects thereof remained still insufficient. Further, the adverse effect to the processing activity in the continuous processing was decreased, but in the case where a recent color developing solution having a reduced replenishing amount was used, there still remained the problem that the fluctuation in the activity of the developing solution was still larger.